A French man returning from Syria reportedly warned police in August that terrorists wanted to attack France

An
undated photograph of a man described as Abdelhamid Abaaoud that
was published in the Islamic State's online magazine Dabiq and
posted on a social media website.REUTERS/Social Media Website via
Reuters

The man, a young computer technician, is identified as Reda H. by
the paper. Over the summer, Reda returned from Raqqa, Syria,
the de-facto capital of the terrorist group ISIS (also known as
the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh).

He reportedly told intelligence officials in August that while he
was in Syria, he met with a Belgian jihadist who asked Reda if he
was interested in going abroad to mount an attack.

According to Le Monde, the jihadist was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who helped organize the
November 13 attacks on Paris and was known to European
counterterrorism authorities. ISIS-affiliated terrorists killed
130 people in several locations across the city that night.

"All I can tell you is that this will happen very soon," Reda
reportedly told intelligence officers. "It’s a real factory out
there, and they’re really trying to hit France or Europe."

Reda claimed that he traveled to Syria because he wanted to fight
the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Investigators noted that the attack in the works that Reda
described in August was very similar to the one that was carried
out at the Bataclan theater in Paris. Three gunmen armed with
AK-47s calmly shot into the crowd that night, killing 89 people,
according to French authorities.

Abaaoud reportedly personally trained Reda in preparation for
Reda returning to France for an attack. Reda was sent back to his
home country before his French passport expired.

Syrian jihadists reportedly gave him €2,000 in cash and a USB
stick with an encryption key that he could download on his
computer. They told him to take a return route through the Czech
Republic, the Netherlands, and Belgium — then wait for
instructions when he got back to France, according to France24.

Abaaoud reportedly told Reda that if he didn't agree to the
attack, he would regret it. The jihadists apparently hoped that
if they killed many civilians, France would alter its
foreign policy. The night of the Paris attacks, terrorists at the
Bataclan theater announced that they were killing people because
they opposed France's bombing campaign in Syria.

Reda told authorities that he never intended to carry out the
attack, and that he only agreed to return to France to await
instructions because his passport was expiring soon and he wanted
to get out of Syria.

France24 notes that "as specific as Reda’s testimony was, it was
still impossible to pinpoint the exact target of the terror
plot." But it's still unclear how Abaaoud
managed to slip back into Europe through Greece without
raising any alarms that would stop him, especially considering
how much French intelligence officials knew about Abaaoud's plans
to stage an attack in France.